Entries from March 2007 ↓

Summer 2007 in Wellington occurred in February. Almost every day was blue and fine with the temperature pretty much stuck at 21 degrees. In the last week of daylight savings on Wednesday 14 March the temperature plummeted to 16 degrees and southerlies and rain and thunder came through. I came to work in a coat and scarf instead of the normal t-shirt.

… 2 days later …

We’re back to summer except daylight savings ends on this day.

Got the orange iPod at last – doubles very nicely as a hair clip!

Little orange lady bird (the Mister still going strong with the arty shots)

Big orange puss at the garden centre

Drove past the Audi dealership on Saturday and parked out front was the brand new S3. As we’d just washed ours we felt entitled to park up and saunter on over to it – just for a look. Snaps for sales skills – the guy came out, shook our hands, remembered my name and encouraged us to take it out for a spin – unchaperoned and without sight-of-licence!

Mmmmm. Nice car. But … feels like a big car. Much bigger than ours (actually it is by a couple of cm here and there) but I mean feels bigger like getting into a Holden Commodore or something. Clutch very soft and easy to use. Gear change very smooth. Breaks very easy. Not like our car – you feel like you’re sitting on the road feeling every bump and gear changes are a hard crunch – I’m sure that’s racing-car style and not stuffed gear box? The new car was very quiet but, man, out of pootling town traffic it goes like a rocket! Sounds so sweet – get’s to 100 in about 5 seconds but makes a rather disappointing ‘ssss’ when the turbo kicks in not the good old boy-racer ‘f tss tsss’ like ours does. Also a bit crazy on the corners – thought I might slide a couple of times and wasn’t sure whether that was because I was actually going a lot faster than I would in our car or that it just felt different and I felt more terrified because it was a brand new someone else’s car or that it actually was not as good on the corners. The door jambs go a lot higher meaning there’s less window to look out on the sides and the doors don’t make the solid thunk when closing them.

To summarise … a larger comfortable touring car that picks up and goes like a rocket. Oh. And it was white. Yuck. But there is a special S3-only colour called Solar Orange …

Lemme at him! The guy who knocks at women’s doors to be invited in with his pink tub of NapiSan to show off the Oxy Action. Out comes the squeezy bottle of tomato sauce, red wine, oil, grass stain or other mysterious substance that you would never imagine could come out in the wash. “A bit of NapiSan OxyAction and into the wash” … “Oh my! I just can’t believe it! It really does work.” Yick, all those gushing women, all those clean clothes. UNTIL … we had to get a glass of red wine that flew at the Mister from across the table and left a very artistic spatter pattern all down the side of his pink shirt out … soaked it over night in the maaaaagical NapiSan OxyAction and not a spot! Nothing. Oh my! I just can’t believe it. It really does work!

Product plug over.

The reason we had red wine at the table on a Monday night was that we had a little spur-of-the-moment dinner party. Our American colleague (”Jiff” we apparently call him) is entertaining his family out from Chicago at the moment and we thought it would be nice to have them over for home-cooked Kiwi tucker. It went down well. People had seconds. And thirds … and fourths …

Rosemary & garlic coated lamb fillet
Warm kumara salad with lemon feta dressing
Green beans drenched in butter

Mini pavlovas with vanilla marscarpone cream and kiwifruit

Found the Bond St guy who actually took the photo. Seriously. We’re getting a copy 🙂 V. excited.

UPDATED:

It’s home! On the floor waiting for us to be brave enough to hang it. It’s so mesmerising. The guy also gave us a book of his photographs which is very cool – just extraordinary photos of ordinary things that he’s taken on his travels. It’s called GEOGRAPHY.

Here’s Joshua sporting his blue cardie with an orange stripe 🙂